by Marc Secchia
Chapter 15: First War-Hammer
DRagon blood spurted into Ardan’s mouth. Despite Baralior’s thick armour, Ardan knew that his fangs had penetrated one of the treble jugular veins located deep beneath the neck muscles, close to the spinal column–a mortal wound. He tasted magic in that blood. With a low laugh that appalled Human-Ardan, he spat Baralior out of his mouth.
Die, lizard.
The Dragon faltered, staring stupidly about him as his lifeblood gushed out in golden streams.
Deliberately, Ardan turned his back on the stricken Dragon. Thou most pleasing distraction, he called over to Aranya, who shone so bright in the twin-suns’ light. She disappeared behind a Sylakian Dragonship with a pert flip of her wings.
Now, the battle exploded around him. Alarm gongs crashed. Engines howled. Soldiers barked orders, and Ignathion’s fleet began to break apart into pre-planned segments, fleeing the clash of Dragons. The flash-trail of Aranya’s fireballs streaked across his retinae. So beautiful. So deadly. Flame blossomed along his right flank as two Dragonships succumbed to her attack. He barrel-rolled, protecting his Riders from the blast. But a cry from his back almost stopped his hearts. Kylara!
Ardan wrenched his neck to check his Riders. The third-positioned Western Isles warrior dangled from the saddle, impaled through her chest by a six-foot metal quarrel, dead.
He felt ashamed at his relief upon realising that Kylara was unhurt.
“Cut her loose,” he growled. Kylara stared at him. “I’m sorry.”
The horror in her eyes cut him to the marrow.
He said, “I’m a Dragon!”
But Kylara’s hand began to lift in a gesture of warning. Sensing movement, Ardan had just begun to twist about when the bulk of a Red Dragon smashed into his hindquarters. Claws scrabbled against his hide, clutching his wing-bone near the shoulder. Ardan’s hind foot belted his jaw repeatedly, but the Red Dragon only snarled and clenched his talons the tighter, his weight slewing Ardan sideways into the path of his brother Red.
Screaming, Hind talons! Hind talons! Aranya flashed up from beneath the melee. She snarled and ripped at Dragon flesh, tearing huge rents in the flailing wings of the Dragon beneath his belly.
Ardan curled his hind paws, extended his talons, and made a running motion against the underbelly of his attacker. So vicious was his attack, that a shower of Dragon flesh and blood momentarily blinded Aranya and her Riders. But the second Red closed his mouth over the area of Ardan’s saddle. He had no interest in three screaming Riders. His jaw gaped wide, exposing every fang as he champed through scales and hide into the bone beneath, seeking the disabling bite that would damage or sever Ardan’s spinal column.
Groaning in pain, Ardan dug to the roots of his being. There was magic swelling in him, leaching throughout his body in cool, quicksilver tendrils, magic that he welcomed with no small surprise.
His body shimmered.
* * * *
Aranya shook herself. Two Red Dragons ruined within seconds–one bitten and falling like a limp red rag into the Cloudlands, the second disembowelled and trying, somehow, to glide back to Jeradia Island. His survival seemed unlikely.
The Shadow Dragon had a ghastly sheen of near-madness in his eye. Naphtha Cluster, he had cried. Had Immadia been razed, would she have gone feral, too?
But the Red on his back was chewing him up. Aranya hovered over them, trying to find an angle from which a forty-foot Amethyst Dragon could attack a ninety-foot Red. Magic! A strange, capricious magic she had never sensed before–where had that sprung from? On her back, Ezziya crowed as another shot from the sisters struck true, exploding one of the armoured Dragonships. Ardan’s entire body undulated like smoke in the breeze.
The Red Dragon’s jaws champed down on thin air, so hard that he bit his own tongue and a couple of bits of fangs popped out of his mouth. He coughed, You … Shapeshifter?
Lost something? Ardan laughed.
She could see right through him! And he had lost his saddle, his Riders, falling onto a Dragonship two hundred feet below–they would strike the soft part near the bow. The rising wind would take care of that.
The Red snapped at vapours. Who are you, Dragon? What are you?
No time. Her calculations occupied but a fraction of a second. Aranya dove into the Red’s flaring wing and tried her utmost to rip it in half.
Ardan’s power made him resemble a semi-transparent anatomical experiment, Aranya decided, spitting out a mouthful of wing membrane and spiny struts. She could make out his skeletal structure, the striations of his flight muscles, even the remnants of his last meal winding their way through his gut. It all drifted into and out of the physical realm, shifting, coalescing, vanishing again.
Then his claws solidified, buried in the Red’s eyes.
The Red Dragon’s scream soared above the sounds of battle, a wrenching, desolate cry. He tore free and fled across the open Cloudlands, blind.
Ardan’s disembodied grin flashed at Aranya. That was weird.
Don’t overstress the magic.
No. And suddenly, a real, dark Dragon appeared before her goggling eyes.
Go get your Riders … Ardan.
Her voice betrayed too much. The Shadow Dragon’s eyes filled with dusky orange flame. Aye. Here comes your father. We’ve an Island to win.
Aranya flitted between the dark oblongs of Ignathion’s Dragonships. The two fleets, reaching firing range, released clouds of crossbow bolts and grappling hooks and fire-arrows from the archers. Explosions rocked both sides. Smoke and grit lodged in her nostrils; the tang of burning oil and sweet meriatite upon her tongue made her want to gag and spit. Her hearts seemed as shadowed as her Dragon-companion. This was wrong. Beran and Ignathion should be allies, fighting Sylakia’s evil together. Instead, everywhere she looked, good men and women were burning, falling and dying. The new, powerful weapons were not installed on many Dragonships, but those that were, tore holes in Beran’s forces.
Battle was a filthy obscenity, yet the Amethyst Dragon revelled in it.
Pfft! Pfft! Aranya’s fireballs set a Dragonship’s cabin alight.
She was curling, swooping, dodging, focussed entirely on the fray, when Ignathion’s third surprise ambushed her from the sky.
A flare of magic. A thunderous challenge: PERISH, FIEND!
Aranya rolled with an instinct swifter than thought as Dragon fire splashed toward her left flank and hindquarters. But this was not only fire. It was molten rock, which stuck and burned. A three-foot foreclaw streaked her flank as a Dragon hurtled past, missing her killing blow by a rajal’s whisker.
The Amethyst Dragon whirled to track her assailant. She shook herself violently to shed the worst of the lava.
The Yellow Dragoness was so massive, she could not stop herself from plunging into a knot of Immadian and Jeradian Dragonships. She must have attacked from a height; from way, way up high where Aranya had not thought to look for her. Ignathion’s cunning once more. The Yellow snarled up in nets and hawsers, two crossbow quarrels jutting several feet out of her lower right ribs, but her molten rock-fire sprayed forth a second time. Aranya dodged again.
How many Shapeshifters did Thoralian have? All of them huge, adult Dragons …
A flick of her eyes. Kylara running along the top of a Dragonship, slicing up a troop of Sylakian Hammers, while Ardan lumbered along behind, bleating, “Get in the saddle, you stupid woman.”
No chance of that, if she knew Kylara. The other two women hung off his saddle straps, trying to get everything buckled up again.
“Cherya? Ezziya–alright?”
“Burned my elbow,” said Cherya. “I’m fine.”
“The multiple loader,” said Ezziya. “Get me there and that Yellow Dragon is chargrill.”
Aranya did not need to look to see where Ezziya was pointing. A new Dragonship was right in the middle of the snarl, its engineers struggling to orient the twin stern emplacements on Beran’s flagship while the Yellow Dragon’s struggles jerk
ed them about. A man fell shrieking off the gantry, his thin cries trailing off long before he tumbled into the Cloudlands.
“Right. We’re going to sneak.”
“Sneak?”
Ezziya’s astonishment brought a soft, dangerous chuckle to her lips. Aye, an Amethyst Dragon could sneak. “Hit that Dragonship to port.”
Two shots, and, KAARAABOOM!
Using the resulting fireball to mask her intent, Aranya whipped around the vessel shielding them from the Yellow Dragon, and then shrank into the cover it provided. Who was that Yellow–someone’s sweet old grandmother? Aranya gripped the starboard gantry, damping down the pain of her lava burns with a touch of healing magic. “Go, Ezziya. We’ll cover you. Cherya–”
“Got him.” Cherya’s arrow struck a Sylakian cleanly in the chest.
Ezziya leaped over to the gantry, drawing her scimitar. Archers whirled at the sound of her boots on the metal walkway, only to be confronted by a battle-hungry Western Isles warrior and a Dragon lurking behind. Slicing her way through, Ezziya took control of the catapult emplacement. The Yellow eyed her with lethal intent.
Over here, you bilious glob of ralti-sheep fat!
As Ezziya pawed at the controls, Aranya’s insult pricked the Dragoness as surely as if she had hooked a fish. Her neck curved to follow Aranya’s swaggering flight, exposing the underside of her neck. The engines howled. Ezziya’s hand slapped a lever.
From sixty feet out, the shot was almost impossible to miss. But the catapult was designed to spray the bolts slightly. Seven of the six-foot, barbed metal bolts sprouted in the Yellow Dragon’s neck. She choked immediately. Her eyes glazed over. But Aranya’s bugle of triumph was cut short by the faraway tinkling of crysglass. She jerked toward the sound.
“Father!”
Opposite, perfectly lined up for the shot, Beran’s flagship drifted on the fickle breeze. The forward crysglass windows were shattered. Several of the remaining bolts–oh no! Oh, Dad …
Wailing in abject misery, Aranya launched herself across that space. Every wingbeat demanded an impossible length of time. She reached out for a paw-hold, but here came the King, staggering, bleeding freely from his arm and head. Beran waved her off angrily. “Just glass cuts. Wretched Dragon-daughter.”
Aranya laughed with relief. “Dad, I–”
“Go do something useful, Sparky. Fetch Ignathion for me.”
A hundred Dragon fangs gleamed at him. “Sure, Dad. On a platter?”
“Shoo.”
Ignathion saw her coming. Aranya knew she should have concealed her intent, but she was so maddened–or frightened–by her father’s near escape, that she could hold nothing back. Storm powers boiled in her belly, demanding release. Aranya opened fire. White-hot fireballs burst out of her throat in rapid succession, four, five strikes, clearing a path into the heart of his fleet.
Cherya yelled as the series of explosions thumped them back and forth, but patted Aranya’s shoulder. “Something annoyed you, girl? Come on. Beran’s orders.”
She’d make a great Dragon Rider. Those words were pitched just right to refocus the Amethyst Dragon’s mind.
As the Amethyst Dragon swooped, Ignathion vanished inside his vessel. He thought to evade her? A maddened Dragoness? Dodging a hail of catapult-shot, Aranya twirled about to destroy the bow catapult emplacements with her tail. Then she swung down to the crysglass windows. Ignathion stood within, watching her alertly, war-hammer in hand. Aranya punched her forepaws through the crysglass. Reaching for the struts, she tore the windows asunder–just as a windroc had once attacked her and Ignathion, although she was the deadlier creature by far.
Aranya roared, “You’re mine!”
By way of answer, he hurled the war hammer at her. Dragon instincts sped her paw to swat the weapon aside.
Ignathion’s eyes widened. But he was an experienced warrior. Flinging himself through the doorway, he retreated into the interior of his vessel.
The Amethyst Dragon pushed her way within, mindful of Cherya on her back. But the Western Isles warrior had already unbuckled her saddle-straps. Leaping into the cabin, she drew her scimitar.
Aranya said, “Let’s go catch ourselves a War-Hammer.”
She punched the next interior wall. Unfortunately, this one was metal-reinforced and it drew an ugly growl of discontent from her as Aranya wrung her paw. A clutch of Sylakian Hammers raced into the room, but she swept them aside and shovelled them out of the open front of the cabin. They fell howling into space. She poked her head through the door. Ignathion’s hammer pounded her nose.
She could not reach him. But his follow-up blow brought his hammer into her reach. Aranya trapped it with her paw and drew a huge breath.
“No fireballs!” yelled Cherya.
Right. Stupid idea, right beneath the hydrogen sack. Ignathion fled down the corridor. Quicker than thought, Aranya transformed and ran after him.
He darted through a doorway into the common area of the Dragonship, where soldiers often had to manually work the turbines to save on expensive meriatite. Human-Aranya, hot on his tail, stormed into a room stuffed with massive Jeradian warriors. She skidded to a halt, pointed at him and demanded, “Surrender, Ignathion!”
A shocked silence alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. Rather–nakedly–wrong. Despite the situation, or perhaps because of it, Ignathion’s eyes twinkled at her. “Lost our clothes, Princess? Grab her, men.”
Eager hands seized the Princess of Immadia.
For a moment, all Aranya knew was heated embarrassment, being trapped in a cabin with two dozen burly Jeradian warriors, most of whom reacted as if they had never seen a naked woman before. Blood trickled from her nose–the result of Ignathion’s hammer-blow to her Dragon’s muzzle. Someone had a blacksmith’s grip upon her left thigh, but Ignathion’s disturbingly possessive glare made the hand surrender its grasp.
Islands’ sakes, she must have ralti sheep intestines for brains.
“First War-Hammer Ignathion,” she said formally. “This is hardly a fair fight.” His soldiers roared with laughter and called out ribald and creative suggestions as to how the Princess might entertain them. But she pitched her words through the hubbub, “You brought only two dozen men to subdue a Dragon?”
Several of the men swore. “She’s not …” “The Dragon?” “Get off the Island, you crazy wench!”
One of the giant Jeradian warriors, standing nearly seven feet tall, swung his war hammer at her head. “Then eat this, woman!”
Her transformation smashed warriors out of the way. Aranya suffered a heavy hammer-blow to her cheekbone. But she cuffed the Jeradian with her forepaw, hitting five of them in a single swipe. Her roar stunned them; storm power released in an indoor space.
“Hold!” shouted Ignathion. “Hold, Aranya.”
“I’ll rip their guts out!”
“Hold. Please, Aranya–for the sake of your mother.”
Unfair! The Amethyst Dragon roused her belly fires into a decent furnace-roar, glowering all the while at the Jeradians pressed up against the walls. Her burning Dragoness’ gaze dared any of them to make the first move. However, these men were wise–or just plain terrified. Not a boot stirred, no hand raised a weapon.
“For Izariela’s sake,” Ignathion soothed.
Aranya snarled, “Told you it wasn’t a fair fight. Any of you men want to play with me now?”
“We surrender.”
His quick interjection almost earned a sarcastic, ‘Oh, do you now?’ However, Aranya remembered how her father had always advised her to act with dignity, whether in victory or in defeat.
“You can surrender to King Beran, First War-Hammer. Fly with me.”
“Green flags,” Ignathion commanded one of his men.
“Aye, sir.”
It struck her halfway to Beran’s flagship, carrying his oldest enemy Dragonback. The battle had quietened as the forces on both sides recognised the green flags which fluttered above Ignathion’s flagship. Aranya
narrowed her eyes at the man on her back.
He said, “I haven’t jumped the Island, Aranya.”
She responded with an ominous growl, formed deep in her chest. “First War-Hammer Ignathion. A question, if I may.”
“I am your captive, Princess.”
Again, that disturbing smile from the man who had loved and lost her mother. Aranya said, “I found your surrender a little … abrupt. Without implying any disrespect, Ignathion–did you fight as hard as you could, today?”
Her Dragon-direct question provoked a chuckle. “A wise commander respects the lives of his men, Aranya, even those foolish enough to handle a Dragoness ungently. By fighting on, what would I have gained? We laid our traps, but you evaded them all. Your victory is well deserved.”
And then he whispered, so softly that only a Dragon could have heard it, “And thus, we shall break the yoke of Sylakia without dishonour.”
Jeradia Island would be freed.
* * * *
It took two further days and five interventions from Aranya or Ardan to break the last of the Sylakian resistance in Jos, Jeradia’s capital city. The evening after they shattered the final pocket of resistance, the two Shapeshifters dined with Ignathion, Yolathion, King Beran and Kylara aboard the Immadian flagship. Aranya squirmed as Ignathion regaled them with the tale of a stark-naked Princess chasing him down, insisting he surrender. Yolathion and his father spent the evening glowering at each other. Kylara would not leave Ardan alone for a second.
When King Beran complimented her on the restraint she had shown during the battle, an insight suddenly crystallised in her mind. Yes, restraint. She had been suppressing every feeling, every thought, the guilt and betrayal, the secrets, the potency of her magic, Fra’anior’s harassment–all had been forced inward for weeks, a toxic brew simmering just beneath the level of conscious thought. Even now, no flame escaped her as it might have done before, when her feelings peaked within her. Aranya feared the storm raging beneath the barrier of her adamantine control. Did she seek to contain the uncontainable? She feared to look at Yolathion, Kylara or her father, because she knew what they would think of her behaviour. Ardan she had to avoid. His dark gaze scorched without stinting. She knew that the soul-fire magic had branded her forever.